


Unfeeling

by Aldebaran



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Erik's childhood is its own warning, Erik's mother is also her own warning, Gen, no explicit warnings to maintain suspense, not surprisingly his childhood contains neglect and deprivation, posted to tumblr as part of a Halloween event, there are horror elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27264292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aldebaran/pseuds/Aldebaran
Summary: A story of Erik's childhood, and the quiet beauties and quiet horrors that help shape him into the man he ultimately becomes.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	Unfeeling

_This face, which earned a mother's fear and loathing  
A mask, my first unfeeling scrap of clothing_

Nurse called where he stayed the attic, but that wasn’t really right. He had read what an attic was in the dictionary and one day he had finally made his way up through the ceiling of his little room and seen the real attic. It was big, the biggest space he had ever seen. It had no true floor in many spots, just beams that he learned to quietly balance upon, nimble and quick and sure-footed.

His own little room was really just below the attic, off a set of stairs that branched left where the main set of stairs met a landing and turned right. Through a door and down a hallway was the door to his room, his own little space tucked away from the main house.

He had a window, though it didn’t open, and was shuttered from the outside. One of the slats on the shutters had come loose and fallen away, leaving him a space to see out. It had been at eye level once, but as he grew taller he had to bend to look out.

The people he occasionally saw outside stayed the same size, far away, below, small, like little dolls, like the little doll family he later carved for himself.

He had asked nurse once how long he had been in the attic. She had gotten a strange look on her face, shaking her head, and closing her eyes, telling him as long as she could remember.

He thought this a funny sort of phrase. He remembered everything, coming from the dark and into the light, red through his eyelids, his first breath, people gasping and crying.

He remembered the cloth being placed over one side of his face, tied there, and he remembered the day someone thought to cut a hole in it for his eye to see out.

Nurse was much older than he was, so her memories must surely stretch back to that time too, and he knew he had not been in the attic then.

He couldn’t see many pictures in his head from those early days, almost as though his eyes weren’t working quite right yet, but he remembered sounds, all the sounds, smells, tastes and oh, he remembered touches. 

There was a lady not his mother who held him close and stroked him, while he suckled at her breast. He liked it best when she held him on his left side, so the uncovered side of his face could press into the warmth of her. He did remember glimpses of her face, and that her eyes were always shut, though her hands and voice were kind and soft.

He remembered that time later, after he began living in the little room, when he had chanced to think back to those days and realized all the sounds he had heard then that were not gasps, cries or screams, had _meaning_ , that they were words, and she had been saying to him, softly, poor thing, poor little thing, you want so much to live.

She had gone after a time, and then nurse had been there, picking him up and placing him in the arms of the woman she called his mother. Maman’s clothes were dark and stiff, scratchy to his skin, and she smelled strange, not like the soft lady who had nursed him. She fed him, not from her breast, but from hard little cups and cold metal spoons that poked and prodded his lips and later clicked roughly against his teeth.

Maman’s eyes were open, but she rarely looked at him and when she did either her eyes were red and her face wet or more often, she looked through him, as though he were a ghost, not really there, her eyes vacant and glassy. 

Sometimes her hands lost their clawing grip on him and he would tumble to the floor, where nurse would eventually find him.

He didn’t cry. 

He had cried once when he was alone with Maman and…well, he didn’t cry anymore.

Maman was different when nurse or the houseman were around. She allowed him to crawl up to her, grasp at her skirts. He would sit beside her sometimes when she sat in the library with a book. She was always telling nurse to take him away, to wash him, to change his clothes, to comb his hair. He thought these things must be important to her, and so he tried to stay clean and neat as best as he could.

He had learned never ever to take off the mask when he was with Maman or with nurse or the houseman and they all told him never ever to take off the mask in front of anybody. They were the only people he knew or saw so he sometimes wondered who anybody might be. 

He learned never to even move his hand toward the mask, for the scolding that would follow any such motion.

Nurse fed him more often now, as Maman didn’t seem to be able to hold onto him very well. One day, when he was especially clean, when he had a fresh mask on that fit him exactly right, Maman took him up in her lap to feed him herself. 

Nurse had gotten a soft look on her face, and she left the room so he was alone with Maman.

She fed him porridge, thin and runny, and she put far too much of it in his mouth at one time, so he had to swallow a lot and try to get it down before the spoon slipped in again.

He couldn’t keep his lips closed right and some of the porridge trickled out, onto his chin.

Maman took a cloth and began cleaning his face, wiping his chin, then moving to the corner of his mouth and then his lips, pressing harder and harder, the cloth covering his nose too, until he was choking on porridge and couldn’t breathe, and he beat his hands against her arm and his feet against the chair.

Nurse came then and took him up, and said things when she stopped screaming that he understood now which he hadn’t understood then. 

He didn’t like to think of those words much once he came to know their meaning. 

That was the day he had been moved up to the little room and he hadn’t seen Maman after that and she never ever fed him again. 

He still heard her though, her voice drifting up from below, her steps on the stairs, moving away down the hall.

He could only think he must have done something very very wrong and that was why he couldn’t see Maman anymore.

If he was good, good as he could be, maybe he would be allowed to see her again someday soon.

* * *

Nurse brought him his meals three times a day on a tray, bringing it inside the little room. She would bring him water to drink plus tea as he got older, and water to wash with and clean clothing and linens and masks.

She chided him at times for a dirty face and said he must wash, but he shook his head and bade her to do it, and when she changed his soiled mask for a clean one, she gave his face a quick rough scrub with a thick cloth, her own face turned away, and put the clean mask on him before his skin had time to dry.

She stayed a time with him when she could, usually cleaning or changing his linens but every once in a while just to talk with him. She had children of her own, she said, mouths to feed, and that is why she must keep this job. It’s the only way, she had said, the only way, God forgive me, and he had been too little to understand why she would need God’s forgiveness simply for taking care of him.

She brought him toys her children no longer played with, and some simple books. She had read a few to him at first, until he got the knack of it himself, and then she brought books with almost every meal, taking the old ones away when he had read them and bringing new. It was not long until she began bringing books from the library downstairs, telling him that most of them were his father’s, poor man, and maybe not of interest to him, being about architecture and science and physics and oh, music.

But he had read them all, curious about all of it, wanting more, more of everything, and curious about his father, what he liked, what he read, what his interests were. When he asked where his father was, nurse had simply sighed and said, gone, he’s gone.

He learned so much in that small room, with books to take him beyond the confines of it, traveling the world in their pages. The window allowed him a glimpse of people, and the church bells brought music through the dirty glass to him at hushed and cherished times.

Nurse told him the bells sang from the carillon at the cathedral in the town. She didn’t need to tell him how many bells, he had counted all the different tones and he knew there were twenty-nine, twenty-nine bells with twenty-nine different voices. She did tell him though, that the biggest bells, those that produced the low tones that shivered through his body even through the window glass, were called _bourdons_ , and that this carillon had three _bourdons_ so large and so special that they each had names: Romain, Cécile, and Guillaume.

Nurse had watched him, on a special holiday that was not a Sunday, for then she would have been in church herself, when the bells pealed their song into the sky, and saw how he stood, head pressed to the glass window to catch all the sounds.

That afternoon, she brought the houseman into his room. The houseman had never before visited his room, and the man’s eyes were wide under his cap, the whites showing, shuffling in behind the nurse with a bag that looked heavy in his hand. 

He was curious and a little frightened himself, his breath coming quicker, sweat prickling on his scalp, thinking how there was nowhere to run in the small room, but nurse told him to stand away, to turn to the corner as she had a surprise in store.

There were odd sounds and noises and a few grumbled curses from the houseman. When at last he could turn around, the houseman had gone.

Nurse had him come over to the window, and she showed him where a pane of glass had been cut and hinged so he could open it. He could feel and breathe fresh air and best of all, from then on the voices of the bells came clear, into his room, into his ears, into his mind.

His head filled with music, heard and unheard, as he took all the notes sung by the bells and scaled them up and down, turning their shapes in his mind and constructing new lattices, new configurations that played for him and him alone.

One cold winter day, nurse told him it was Christmas, Christmas Eve actually, and she brought some presents, some sweets and books and three whole China oranges, all for him. And she told him to open the windowpane though it was very cold out, and when he did, he heard a new kind of music, voices raised in song, and instruments other than bells. Violins, she told him, and flutes, and recorders, and drums.

He was mesmerized, listening to the music as it sounded far up the street, moving closer and closer, hearing the ribbons of the voices twining through the accompaniment of the instruments.

He thought his heart would burst from happiness. He never even noticed when nurse slipped away after the carolers left their doorstep, listening as they moved down the street until he could hear them no more, except they played on and sang in his mind, and he had new instruments now, and voices too, to add to the bells that already chimed silent songs for him.

* * *

For a long while, music was enough.

But there would come days, when the air gusted through the open pane, carrying scents and voices and laughter, that the music would quiet, and he would long to go out, out from the small room, daring to dream of the house beyond, and the street beyond the house.

He dreamed sometimes of a room of his own choosing, not so high up and so far from people, with windows without shutters, that opened to let in the sun, with enough lamps and candles so he was never left in the dark as he often was when the lamp oil ran out, and then he would have to think of books from memory because there was no light to read by, or play music in his head in the gloom, or sing the songs he had written, his voice threading out into the night as he curled on the hard bed and lay his head on the lumpy gray pillow.

He dreamed sometimes of just opening the door, and walking out into the house below.

He had learned though, from nurse, that he must never leave the room, must never try to leave, though she would not say why in any detail, only that it was for his own good, and to keep him safe. 

The door was unlocked, in case of fire she said, and here she crossed herself and muttered a prayer that had something to do with Maman, but he couldn’t make out all of the words. 

He didn’t understand the why of any of it, and the books he had read taught him that why was one of the most important questions ever.

Alone in his room, between books, between meals, time stretching out with no promise of a visitor to see until the next mealtime, there came a day when he dared remove the mask which covered the right side of his face and learn the why of it all for himself.

To be scientific, to be thorough, his questing fingers felt first the left side of his face, smooth skin and firm flesh moving against the sharp slant of his jawbone beneath and the rounded height of his cheekbone above. As his hand rose, his lips slid beneath his palm, sensitive to the touch, his small finger slipping along the defined bridge of his nose as his other fingers continued up through the soft brush of his arched eyebrow, over his forehead and into the plush thicket of his hair, following the smooth curve of his skull beneath.

His other hand, once he had coaxed it, shaking, against the right side of his face where it was bared and damp, open to the air, found not one single feature that matched the left. Oh, the deep structures of jawbone and cheek were mostly the same, but the skin above was not smooth, the flesh gnarled and rutted and wrong against his fingers. The lips still sensitive, but widened and possessed of no symmetry. The strong nose slumped and blended, no high firm bridge found as his fingers crept upward through the patchy coarse brow, finding a ridged and grooved forehead, and beneath the thick hair, not the smooth sweep of skull but rather a pitted and raised structure larger than his palm.

He learned the why of the little room then, and of the mask, and learned that both eyes shed tears in the same way, here alone with himself where it was safe to cry.

* * *

He was still crying, masked and crying, when nurse came several hours later, and when she asked him why, he had no answer for her, either.

She must have felt especially bad for him, for later that week she brought him something new, a penknife and some odds and ends of wood, that he might carve them into whatever he chose.

This was fascinating, and he discovered he liked working with his hands, freeing the shapes hidden in the wood grain and it wasn’t long until he had fashioned a little family of figures. Himself, sister, brother, nurse, houseman, father—though he had no idea what one would actually look like—and after some hesitation, mother as well.

He cut a piece of his mask’s tie to fashion a little mask for the figure of himself. The wood had had a knot where the right side of his face would be and he had spent some frantic minutes carving it out and away, which ended up leaving the right side different from the left anyway and he found he hated looking at it. There was no more wood, so he must make do with what he had. The tiny mask did the trick.

Nurse thought the small dolls charming, although something he couldn’t quite read flitted across her face as she held the figure of himself. She had cradled it for a long moment, blinking, then swallowed hard and returned it to the little family tableau.

On her next visit, she brought another surprise. Needles, and thread, and a stack of cloth scraps, colors and hues he'd never seen outside of pictures in books, sparkling like sunlight through raindrops in the drab little room where everything else was shades of grey and tan, even his shabby clothes, the worn linens, and the silvered wood of the floor and walls.

He savored the feel of so many new and different textures against his fingers, reveled in the colors, brilliant blues and deep reds, vivid yellows and vibrant greens, the subtle sheen of metallic threads, the satin gleam of embroidery, and on one small square of deep black fabric, the tiny intricate patterns made out of dark glass beads, each faceted to shatter the light and cast it back in glittering shards.

The scraps came from her sister, nurse said, who was a dress maker for very rich ladies, and she was allowed to keep remnants so long as they were small enough. Nurse said she thought he might like to make clothes and things for the little doll family, and he embraced the idea eagerly. Nurse had even brought him a pair of small silver scissors, just the right size for his hands.

He pursued sewing as avidly as music and doll making, and nurse brought him books to learn from and a few sheets of paper and the stub of a pencil to make patterns with. Soon the little doll family all had suits and dresses, and he gave brother and sister names after the _bourdons_ of the carillon, Romain and Cécile, and thought that maybe fathers had names too, so he called the father Guillaume. 

Mother, though, she was always Maman, and he made her the finest dress and held the little figure to the smooth side of his face, pretending that she kissed him.

Nurse had made him responsible for cleaning his own face now, and he was careful to turn the little family to the wall when he took his mask off to wash or when he changed an old mask out for a new one when they became soiled or grew too small.

He was struck by an idea one day, that he could make his own masks, and make them fit better, just the way he would like, and nurse brought him more of the same muslin they were made out of, and special paper for patterning and two whole pencils for marking and drawing. He soon had crafted an array of masks, so he would always have a clean one to hand, which was important as he wore one always, even while sleeping, removing it only to wash his face.

The pattern paper turned out to also be excellent drawing paper and he suddenly had another diversion.

Hours were spent drawing while music played in his head, drawing pictures of people, and buildings, and clothes he would like to sew, and embroidery patterns, and of course, pictures of his dream room, which now included images of every musical instrument he could find reference for in books. 

The dream room was filled with music and light and softness, pillows of every shape and size, beaded and tasseled and trimmed in satin, textures begging to be touched, bursting with color and hue in his mind’s eye.

It was startling sometimes, to bring his eyes up from his drawings and find the reality of the small dull room that held all the open vistas of his imagination within its four close walls.

* * *

He had studied books on architecture and made his drawings with care, renderings of actual buildings he could see partially through the shuttered window, buildings found in pictures in books, and of course buildings he dreamed up in his own mind. 

He had never seen his own house from the outside, so perhaps that was why he had never made the connection before.

But one day, looking around the close walls of his room, he realized—he was in a building. And he knew buildings, knew that they had spaces for people to live in and move about, but that much of any building was hidden, behind the walls, beneath the floors, above the ceilings. Spaces, empty spaces, crucial for the support and structure of any edifice. And therefore, this house, this building….would have them, too.

He had promised never to open the door…but this wouldn’t be opening the door, would it? And nurse need never know, no one need ever know. He asked for nothing. Surely he could be allowed one secret? 

He made his way through the ceiling first, starting one evening right after dinner, as he knew he wouldn’t see nurse until the next morning and therefore had a long stretch of time with no interruption.

He wasn’t tired, he felt no need for sleep. He often didn’t, staying up all night reading, or drawing, or sewing, when there was light to see by. Music was done in his head, and he didn’t need light for that, he could do music in the dark, but the other things needed light. Which was why, he supposed, he burned through lamp oil faster than nurse ever seemed to anticipate.

The project went faster than he even expected; he had figured it right, where the joists and supports were, and he stacked his chair on his table and used the little penknife to cut right through the ceiling. He pushed the square up and into the attic, and pulled himself up after.

He sat, blinking, on the edge, his legs dangling down, expecting to have to let his eyes adjust to the dark before he spent time exploring the large space, which certainly would run the full length and width of the house. He knew from overheard conversations one time when some men came to work on the house that the attic did not have flooring everywhere, and he would need to be careful to watch his step. But as he raised his eyes, and looked around, finding the room far less dark than he had anticipated, the attic fell away in importance.

Because there were windows. Windows without closed shutters, and early evening light shining through the grime…

He made his way to the first one he saw as quickly and carefully as he could, and pressed his face against the glass, drinking in the sight of the street and the houses and the grass and the trees stretching away as far as his eye could see. 

He had never seen so far, had never dreamed of seeing so far. So much color and light and movement! Underneath it all, patterns, shifting and forming like the music in his mind, a structure and an order that he could see, the reasons why not yet comprehensible to him and his eager mind set to work at once, determined to have the answers.

He knelt in front of the first window until the light faded, forgetting to breathe, his legs gone numb beneath him and when the evening descended, the view was still spellbinding because the lanterns were lit, little flickering lights in the night spreading out before him, receding to pinpoints and all of them dancing, dancing in the dark. 

And in the sky, those must be stars…

* * *

It took him a long time to explore the attic, evening after evening, taking in the sights from each window for hours, his first sunset, his first sunrise, and ah, the moon, remembering to drop back down into his room with enough time to pull the ceiling square back in place, held up by little shims of wood he’d carved and inset, and then to cover the cuts in the ceiling with a paste of water and tiny bits of torn paper.

Once he had soaked in the view from every window, he learned the layout of the whole attic floor. He desperately wanted to run the length of the house, to stretch his legs in a way his small room did not allow, but he knew, from hearing the scratchings of rats above him in the night at times, that there was a possibility he could be heard, and he couldn’t risk losing the view from the windows and oh, the stars, if he was caught.

He thought about chancing it, as he knew from before that the upstairs was mainly bedrooms, most likely empty in the early evening hours. He remembered the day long ago, before he had been shut in the little room, when he had first climbed the staircase, Maman standing below, urging him up, next to the slatted wooden barrier she had pulled aside, and while nurse was busy in another room. 

He had conquered the steps, though he had to use his hands, and then he hadn’t listened to Maman calling for him to come down, excited to explore this new territory and he had toddled from room to room, taking it all in.

He had run back to the top of the stairs, eager to tell Maman what he had seen, and she said to him come down, come down to me and he had tried as best as he could. But his foot had caught somehow when he tried to step down and then he was falling, tumbling over and over, unable to stop himself until he landed at Maman’s feet.

He wanted to cry though he knew he mustn’t and he hadn’t the breath for it anyway. Maman had looked down at him, until his cries at last began, then with her lips tight against each other she had turned and walked away.

When nurse finally came and held him close, comforting him as he tried to stop crying, he knew he had disappointed Maman by falling and he determined never to fall again, to be strong and agile and quick and to be aware of everything that might trip him up in his surroundings at all times, so she would never need to walk away from him again.

Though the lovely large space of the attic still beckoned, he didn’t dare to run and be heard and be found a disappointment, being out of his room. He also didn’t dare risk poking holes in the ceiling of the upstairs rooms, though he so wanted to see Maman, see her face again. But the dust would sift down and give him away. Also, it didn’t seem right to go peering into rooms where people might be changing their clothes, getting ready for bed. He certainly wouldn’t like people looking at him when he was washing his face or changing for bed on those occasions when he slept.

So, he made his way into the walls.

It was slow going at first. But eventually he had a path to the downstairs, and had explored the layout of the first floor, which was the same as he remembered yet different from his perspective within the walls. He’d thought of proceeding across the ceiling of the first floor, but it was much more challenging than the attic, as he’d have to crawl on his belly through the tight space, choked with diagonal supports for the floor above. At least in the walls he was upright, and it took much less energy to move.

He finally had made his way into the long wall of the parlor, where he had spent much time when he was small. It was here that nurse had sat with him, feeding him, and here that nurse had left him alone that final day with his mother. 

He could hear voices through the walls, and thus dared not make an opening to see out of. But there, further down from where he stood, light shone through some small forgotten nail hole. He made his way carefully over to it.

Peering through, as though back in time to days gone by, he looked out into the parlor. There, seated upon the divan, was his mother, speaking to the houseman, who stood before her, twisting his cap in his hands.

He did not register what they were saying. He knew he was hearing it and would be able to listen to the words later in his mind and determine their sense. For now he was a creature of vision only, his eyes rapt upon his mother’s face. 

Just as he remembered, her dark hair swept up and pinned in place, her skin pale, taut across high cheekbones, the knife edges of her jawline meeting in an equally sharp chin below dark red lips, her nose a keen blade cutting her face into two perfect halves. Her dark eyes matched her hair, catching and holding the lamplight.

The instant he saw her, he began counting the minutes until he would see her again. 

* * *

The next weeks were spent carefully questioning nurse, to determine Maman’s routine as best he could, and forging paths to the library and dining room. The library was a disappointment, the walls full of shelves and not a space to look from, the books lining the walls muffling sounds, not that much conversation ever took place here that he could determine. 

He had better luck with the dining room, finding a space within the room’s walls from which to watch and listen. He had to choose his evening’s station carefully because moving from room to room took far too long and was very dangerous besides when people were about. 

To his great disappointment, he soon learned that his mother spent many evenings away from the house, so that he only saw her a few times each week. 

It was strange. He had gone so long with no sight of her, that he had thought one glance would be enough to live upon, but he found the more he saw her, the more he needed to see her. Even when he was not within the walls, but instead in his room, his every thought was of her. Drawing or sewing, he wondered if she would like what he made. Tea parties with the doll family no longer included anyone but he and Maman, the other figures turned to face the wall, and he would tell her then of books he had read and sing her songs he had composed.

The desire to see her grew so strong that he spent several late evenings finding a path to the kitchen, and one day after lunch, he dared make his way down after nurse had left his room, to see if he could see Maman there. It was very risky, there was not much time between lunch and dinner, and he was under no illusions what would happen were he caught out of his room. 

It would be the end of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the end of seeing Maman…

It took a long time to make his way quietly to the kitchen, but he was not disappointed, Maman was there with nurse and they were discussing shopping and what to buy. He enjoyed the talking very much and there were many new words for him to look up in the dictionary later that night, so he could learn the meaning of the whole conversation he was hearing.

Eventually, nurse headed out for a quick shopping trip, and then he watched Maman do an interesting thing.

He had had tea parties with a little toy tea set nurse had brought him, so he recognized the teakettle right away. Maman filled it with water and set it over a flame on what must be the stove. Although the tea was usually cold when nurse brought it up to him for dinner, nurse had told him it was made this way, hot, on the stove.

Then Maman did something that made him cry. She got down two cups from the cupboard, a large one and a small one that he recognized as one of the ones nurse said were just for him, just his size she said. 

Maman was making tea….for him! She must think of him then, must think of him as he thought of her. 

His chest was tight with happiness, his hands gripping into fists in lieu of shouting out loud, and tears fell from his eyes, those on the left tracking straight paths through the dust on his face from his journey within the walls, those on the right branching across his distorted features, eventually dampening the muslin mask.

He could hardly wait until nurse got back from the market with necessities for supper. Would Maman make his food, too? All this time, had he been eating food that she prepared for him with her own hands, though she didn’t bring it up to him herself?

He watched as she brought down from the cupboard a container that held loose tea, and as she spooned it into a thing that looked like one of his stockings, which she set beside a red teapot. She spent a long time looking at the teapot, her hands on the counter clenched in a way that made her knuckles turn white. She eventually turned the flame down on the stove beneath the teakettle, and crossed to the kitchen table.

He thought she would be seated, waiting for nurse to return so that dinner could be prepared while the water warmed for the tea. He knew he should head upstairs soon; he risked the awful consequence of being found out if he lingered much longer. 

But then Maman did something unexpected. She took a chair and pulled it over to the counter, standing upon it to reach a high cupboard shelf just as he stood upon the chair stacked on the table in his own room to make his way up into the attic and from there down into the walls.

She took from that shelf a strangely familiar little box, and stepping down from the chair, pulled a spoon from a drawer and began scooping powder from the box, which she shook spoonful by spoonful into the red teapot on the counter. She lifted the teakettle, pouring a little water into the teapot, and trading teakettle for teapot in her hands, proceeded to tip the teapot from side to side several times, swirling the water inside. Setting it back on the counter, she placed the sock that held the loose tea into the opening of the teapot, and put the spoon into the sink.

Maman just had time to seal the little box back up and return it to the shelf, seating herself rather quickly as he heard nurse come through the front door and then into the kitchen, dinner items from the shops in her string bag.

The two women chatted and his heart stuttered to see that yes, Maman did help prepare the dinner, as all the while he puzzled about the little box, and what had been in it, and why should it have seemed familiar to him when he had not seen the kitchen since he had been a babe in arms?

He considered it, the shape of it, the color, the grain of the powder that she had spooned from it, as nurse told Maman to make herself comfortable in the parlor where it was cooler, and that nurse would bring Maman dinner and tea first, then take his own dinner tray upstairs and he watched Maman leave the kitchen and nurse finish the preparation of a light meal suitable for the summer heat. 

He thought about it as nurse turned the flame up beneath the teakettle and as it began to gently steam he knew he needed to leave now, to make it back to his room in time. But something held him in place, searching his memories.

When the teakettle screamed, making him start, he had it. Where he had seen the box before.

Nurse poured water through the tea leaves in the sock, fragrant steam rising up from the red teapot.

He had seen the little box before, in his room, on nurse’s tray, long ago, when she had heard rats scratching in the walls of his room and he had showed her the hole they had made at the base of the wall. She had taken that little box, and added powder to little bits of cheese that she placed along the walls, telling him he must not eat them, that they were—

Poison! Maman had put poison into the teapot, and she had set out two cups, his and—hers!

He used the clattering of the teakettle as nurse set it back on the stove to mask the sound as he turned and scrabbled as fast as he could, like a rat in the walls, frantic to get up, up to his room and out the door. He must tell nurse, he must make nurse stop Maman from drinking the tea!

Nails tore at his clothes and skin as he clambered upward, breathing in great lungfuls of stale dusty air as he climbed fast as he could, up at last to the far end of the attic, where he finally ran the length of it, not caring about the noise, teetering along the beams until he reached the hole through the ceiling above his room. Not stopping to climb down, he jumped through the opening, tipping the chair off the table as he dropped and landing sprawled on the floor.

He got himself up, over to the door and through it, breaking the rule, losing the sun, moon and stars but not Maman, never Maman, as he rushed to meet nurse coming up the stairs with the tray.

She froze with shock at the sight of him and scarcely seemed to be able to understand as he shouted you must stop her, you must stop Maman! She has put poison, poison in the tea, you must stop her from drinking it!

He saw her face collapse into anger as she pushed him back to his room, saying what are you doing, what has come over you, breaking rules and telling lies?

He kept shoving at her, trying to move her back, turn her around, wild with the need for her to stop, stop and listen.

I saw her, he sobbed, I saw her from within the walls!

Nurse made it into his room, as he clutched at her skirts and pulled at her arm. He saw her shocked gaze take in the toppled chair, the table out of position, the open hole in the ceiling, and then himself, covered in dust, clothes torn, bloody from nails raking his skin. Her eyes widened and she dropped the tray, and flew faster out of the room than he had ever seen her move before.

He collapsed to the floor, shaking, strength gone, feeling the tea, warm for once, spattered on the floor beneath his hands.

* * *

There had been screaming and shrieking and cries in his mother’s voice of no, no, let me go, and nurse’s voice rising in a great shout, calling for the houseman, and Maman saying a great many words he did not know, like _salope_ and _casse-toi_ until after a loud slapping noise and the sound of glass breaking, he did not hear her voice at all anymore.

Later, there was a carriage out front and a knock at the door, and a strange man’s voice, and even later than that, the sound of nurse and the houseman and the strange man struggling to bring something heavy up the stairs.

He dared only to creep to his bed and lie with his head on the colorless pillow, staring at the hole in the ceiling which it was too late to cover and fixing in his mind his last view of the sun, the moon, the stars and Maman’s face when he had first seen her again after so long, dark and sleek and beautiful as she sat on the divan in the parlor.

Nurse came much later, through the door of his room that had been open since she left, seeking him out in his bed, sitting by his side and resting her rough red hand on his shoulder.

Your mother is all right, she said to him. The doctor has been to see her and has given her something to help her sleep.

She squeezed his shoulder and had him roll onto his back, so she could look him in the eyes. It was hard to do, to look her in the face with the hole in the ceiling spilling all his secrets just above their heads, but he did it. Nurse had saved Maman, and he was grateful.

Your mother made a mistake, a terrible mistake, choosing the wrong container, nurse said. It was good you were there to see her, to save her, but—and here nurse looked up at the ceiling and then back down at him—you must never go into the walls again, do you understand? People do not go into walls, this is something only rats do, and you are better than a rat.

He nodded solemnly up at her, believing her for that moment, that he was better than a rat.

When your mother is rested, when she is over the great shock of her mistake, I will see if we can take the shutter off the window, would that be good, nurse asked, her voice kindly but her eyes filled with tears.

He nodded again, tired in a way he had never been.

Sleep now, she said, and I will pick up this mess. In the morning, I will come with breakfast and the houseman will come to patch the ceiling.

He watched as she picked up the tray and the spilled food and the teacup, mopping up the tea with a rag and stacking everything together on the seat of his chair, and saw that she carried it, chair and all, out into the hallway with her, closing the door softly behind her and leaving him in darkness, as the lamp had once again run out of oil.

* * *

He must have fallen asleep, for at first he thought he was dreaming, later in the night, when he heard an odd sound in the hallway, a shuffling, thumping sound coming down the hall in an unnatural rhythm that was not that of footsteps. 

Not two beats, but four, two strong, two weak, something rustling and dragging toward his room, closer and closer until it came to rest outside his door, falling heavily against it.

He had crept out of bed and come nearer to the door, breath held, his other senses extended in the dark.

It was his mother. He could scent her perfume, the same perfume she had worn long ago, rising from the crack beneath the door.

She was breathing, heavily, deeply, ragged inhalations and shuddering exhalations and she was saying something over and over as her fingers began to rattle at the knob, seemingly without the strength to turn it.

His first thought, his first instinct, was to hold the knob, to pull on the door, so she couldn’t get in, but why he thought this he could not say.

Besides, the door opened outward, and she had fallen against it, it would never move unless she found her feet…

Nothing seemed certain; perhaps he really was dreaming. At any rate, he surely must have misheard Maman’s repeated mumblings.

He knew he had been crying most of the night, crying quietly since nurse had left him earlier in the evening, crying over the events of the day, crying until he fell asleep.

Surely Maman had only come to say, please don’t cry, please don’t cry, and not what he thought he heard, why won’t you die, why won’t you die…

In the morning, when nurse entered his room, she exclaimed sharply and woke him up from where he had fallen asleep hidden beneath his bed.

Maman was no longer outside his door, if she had ever been there at all. 

He told nurse his dream, and she shushed him and held him close, which surprised him, but not enough to pull away.

When the houseman came, the hole in the ceiling was patched, and this time he could watch the houseman work, as he was not made to turn away.

Nurse had the houseman put a lock on his door, and she gave him a chain to wear about his neck, with a little key on it, for the lock was on the inside of the door, and at night, after he washed his face and got ready for bed, he was to be sure to lock the door and have the key with him always.

* * *

The next few months passed in a haze, the stifling high summer heat slowly fading into the coolness of autumn. 

The shutter was still on his window, not that he had any appetite to look outside anyway. His Maman was still in need of rest, nurse said, meaning there had been no good time to ask her permission to remove it.

The loss of the view from the attic windows was terrible, but he had done what he had to do to save Maman from the mistake she had made. Given the choice again, he would make the same one.

Still, wood carving, reading, sewing, the little doll family, nothing held any appeal. The music in his head never stopped, so he took some comfort from that.

Nurse had even brought him a full set of color pastel pencils, but he had managed barely any drawings at all. He had taken to lying for long periods of time on his bed, thinking, searching his memories, finding in his recollections of Maman that she always seemed sad somehow, and wondering how he could make her happy.

He had started one project in his head, counting all the days he remembered, so he was not surprised at lunchtime one day in early October when nurse told him that it was to be his birthday soon, and that she would measure him for some new clothes that very evening.

He would turn six, and should have clothes that fit him properly, she said, and that aligned very nearly with the days he had counted while lying on his bed, hands clasped behind his head, feeling his too short sleeves ride up his arms, and seeing where his ankles extended quite a bit beyond the hem of his worn trousers. He had let the trousers down himself, and sewn them, a few times, but there was nothing left to let down anymore.

He had calculated too, the answer to the question he had asked nurse some time ago, how long he had lived in the little room--just about four years. It was very interesting to him that he had arrived at the answer himself, through his own means. It started him thinking that perhaps he should seek his own answers to other issues. 

Nurse had told him at lunch that he should wash himself thoroughly before supper, so he would be clean for her to do the measurements. She said also that she had a surprise for him, that she would bring when she brought his supper.

He had bathed his body using the water, basins and pitcher she had brought, and had redressed in his cleanest attire. He had set a small basin up on his table, and removed his mask to bend over the water and wash his face.

He didn’t know why it happened now, or why it had not happened before.

Perhaps it was the color of the basin, dark where it was typically white, or some quality of the late afternoon sun angling through the slatted shutters.

Perhaps it was the angle at which he himself bent over the basin, preparing to cup water onto his face. 

Some time ago, after he had felt his face for the first time with his own hand not muffled by a thick cloth, he had realized that splashing soap and water directly onto the misshapen side of his face seemed to clean it better than trying to touch it only with a rag.

Perhaps it was his hair, which had grown long and flopped forward as he leaned over and bent his neck. 

Whatever combination of events conspired, this is what happened.

He bent over the basin, eyes shut, ready to bring handfuls of water to his face, when his hair shifted forward. Without thinking, he raised his hand to push the mass of it off of his forehead, slicking it back with his wet fingers…and he opened his eyes.

The water in the basin settled, becoming flat, glassy and reflective, and he saw his own face unmasked for the first time.

He stared for a long while, his hand still in his hair.

It was not quite the surprise that it might have been. He had felt his face before, and he had drawn many pictures of people. Somewhere in his mind, he must have imagined a rendering of what he had felt with his hands.

Still, it was a shock, several shocks.

One shock was to see the unmarred side of his face and learn with a start how closely it resembled, with masculine changes, the sharp sleek lines of his mother’s face. His hair too, was hers, thick, dark, catching the light, holding most within its black depths, reflecting hints back outward in glossy highlights.

His eye on that side the same deep brown, but with glinting golden accents.

His breath-caught attention was next captured by his other eye, deep blue, striated with black, both eyes fringed with long dark lashes.

And his face…what his fingers had felt, his eyes now saw, and his mind, quick at patterns, rendered it almost mathematically, architecturally, seeing where things had gone terribly wrong, measuring the slope and curve of the gaps and rivulets that carved through his features, envisioning the supporting bone beneath like a steel substructure covered by drooping canvas.

He had no standards of beauty or ugliness to judge himself by, but symmetry, rhythm, balance--these he knew and there was nothing of that to be seen in the image which wavered below him in the basin.

And he hated it, on sight. 

This was what kept him confined to this little room, this was what kept him from his mother, this was what had stolen the sun, moon and stars from him.

He hung, gasping, over the basin, wanting to strike it to the floor, to push away the awful reflection.

But he didn’t. 

He knew that only meant his room would become wet and disordered, and that someone would have to clean it up.

He shut his eyes, finished washing his face, and resolved that to match the finery of his new suit of clothes, he should make for himself a mask, much better and more concealing than the thin muslin things he had been wearing. 

Perhaps, if he made it fine enough, he might be permitted to see his mother again, permitted to live somewhere else in the house, one of the bedrooms down the hall, with windows that were not shuttered and which opened to let the sun and the air in.

A beautiful mask, that his mother would want to see, that would make her happy, so beautiful that she would want to see him again, as he longed to see her.

When nurse brought supper, and he had eaten, and she had taken the measurements for his new clothes, she laid the parcel containing the surprise on his little table.

He could tell she was anxious. She smoothed the paper wrapping of the package with hands that shook and she darted hopeful little glances toward him. She had been worried about him, about his unaccustomed lassitude, his lack of interest in the things he had used to pursue with boundless energy. 

I hope you like this, was all she said, almost shyly. A seamstress my sister knows has married well, and is moving away, and bade her take any of her supplies she wished. I have spoken to her of you, as you know, and there was enough there for her to be able to gift these things to you.

Long ago, nurse had spent some time explaining God to him and teaching him to pray. To please her, he had tried, speaking the words, moving his hands in the prescribed gestures. He had continued long past any hope of ever hearing an answer, because nurse had told him it was important to do so. 

He had been so afraid when he was trying to save his mother from the tea, it was one of few instances where his memory failed him and he could not recall if he had said a prayer or not. Perhaps nurse had, for God had spared his mother.

But this time, he remembered praying. He had prayed this very day.

Opening the package, seeing the large swaths of rich fabrics folded in neat thirds, the dozens of tiny skeins of silky and glittering embroidery thread shining like a rainbow fallen to earth, seeing the little packet of brand new steel needles in several sizes and types, a small fortune just in needles he knew, all of it right there in front of him, begging him to create something beautiful…it was the first time God had ever answered his prayers that he could recall.

* * *

The first part of October passed in a frenzy of design and sewing. Different styles, different fabrics, patternmaking and trials and drafts.

He barely ate, barely drank, barely slept, and nurse would scold him, finding him unwashed and unkempt, fingers pricked and bloody, surrounded by dozens of projects in various states of progress.

The room was hot, the cool autumn trending warmer and warmer, the sun, he supposed, beating down and heating the small still room. There was not a breath of wind when he opened the small windowpane, which in his focus on his task, he often forgot to do. 

Nurse never stayed angry for long, bringing him cool water to bathe his hot face and neck, and asking him to remember to eat and drink, for how else would he keep growing big and strong? 

On his birthday, when nurse presented him with trousers and shirts and even a short jacket, suitable for an older boy, it had been enough to take him from his project for a short while, he had been so happy for the new clothes, made by nurse’s sister. 

He had thanked her over and over, and then he had asked her a most important question. 

When I am finished, when I have made the best mask, he said, will you take it to Maman, will you take it and ask her if it is good enough for me to come see her if I wear it? 

He imagined how well he would look, in his wonderful new clothes and the finest mask he could make from the materials nurse had brought. He felt his lips turn up in a hopeful smile.

Nurse swallowed, and ducked her head, pulling at the new clothes he wore, pinching the seam of the jacket’s shoulders and settling it just so.

I will see, she said, see if she is rested enough. For now, you just keep working, but remember to eat! And remember also what I’ve told you, she reminded. At the end of the month, I will be away for Hallowtide. I will serve you lunch on All Hallow’s Eve, but will be gone beginning that afternoon. There’s church that night, you know, and services for All Saint’s and All Soul’s the two days after. The houseman will bring your meals to you then, and you must behave for him.

He fidgeted beneath her hands, anxious now to be back to his sewing. 

And, she hesitated, don’t listen to him too much, for he will try to fill your head with tales of the _danse macabre_ and the thinning of the veil between the living and the dead that night, evil creeping among the unaware and all sorts of superstitious nonsense. He is a good man, but he can say wicked things sometimes.

He shucked off the new jacket, saying, he never talks to me anyway, he’s afraid of me.

Well, she huffed, taking the jacket away to hang on the pegs that served in place of an armoire, he’s a good man, but God knows good men can be stupid. Pay no mind to his stories, and you two will do fine while I am gone. And remember to lock your door at night.

He sewed constantly as the days passed, pricking his fingers so much that he got used to it, determined to do the best job he could. He eventually created a design that fit well, and was comfortable, covering the misshapen side of his face from mouth to forehead, tying firmly round his head with a series of strings that were hidden by his thick hair. 

He made a few masks of this style in muslin, as they were lighter and cooler than the thick rich fabrics he would create the beautiful mask from, and they also served as a way to keep the finer masks clean as he tried them on for fit.

When he had settled on the final design, and Maman had approved of it, he would line it with muslin and use a finishing technique he had developed that would give structure to the edge that ran along the middle of his face.

He had sewed and partially embroidered several masks now, and finally had decided upon the black one, embroidered with little silver hearts and flowers to show Maman how much he loved her.

He sewed and embroidered for hours and days, the room turning sweltering in the final week of October in the unseasonable heat. His fingers were slippery with sweat as they plied the needle, wanting the mask perfect and ready by breakfast the morning of All Hallow’s Eve, so that nurse could ask Maman about it and tell him Maman’s decision at lunch, before nurse left for her time away for Hallowtide observances.

At last the mask was finished, and--it _was_ perfect. He was very critical of his own creations and he had to admit to himself that this was his finest work and he could do no better.

Nurse’s eyes went wide when he showed it to her. He was sure she was astounded at all the intricate and beautiful detail he had put into the silver embroidery, which shimmered against the rich black fabric of the mask.

You’ve finished, she stammered.

Yes, he said eagerly, so you can show it to Maman and tell me what she says before you go.

All right, she said slowly, all right.

When she returned with lunch, he knew at once something was wrong.

What is it, he asked, what did she say? His breath came quickly, and he felt a flushing as though the autumn heat burned even hotter, and something in nurse’s face made him think he should have prayed harder.

Nurse held the black and silver mask in her hand, and seated herself heavily on his bed.

Oh, child, she said, your mother, your mother is not a well woman.

Was she not well enough to give an answer, he asked, between rapid breaths, standing before her seat on the bed, twisting his hands, that ached from sewing and stung with needle pricks.

God forgive her, and God forgive me too, said nurse. I have done so many things wrong but I’ve tried my best to be truthful with you. So I will tell you what she said, but I want you to hear everything I have to say. She says no…

His head swam, and his ears buzzed, and his vision went black. He could not hear a word she said, and he thought he would faint dead away in the heat of the little room. He felt as though he was looking up at the stars again, falling into them, falling into the night. 

It was that moment he had been shut in the little room for the first time.

It was first hearing the carillon, singing through the air.

It was climbing through the ceiling into the unexpected light of the attic.

It was seeing his mother’s face again, looking with older eyes and a mind that now knew words.

It was the first touch of his face under his fingers, his first sight of it in the still water.

He had had very few of them in his life, but he could recognize a moment like this. 

A moment that changed everything. 

He stood, swaying.

…and so after this weekend, and nurse reached out and gripped him by the shoulders, looking into his eyes as her face rippled back into view, after this weekend, I will talk to my husband, and I will talk to your mother again and we will see what we can do. What do you think of that, she said.

And he nodded, though he had no idea what she had said, except that his mother had said no. 

The mask wasn’t good enough for her.

He wasn’t good enough for her.

He would never be good enough.

Nurse’s face and voice receded once more. 

He was falling into the night sky again. 

And he would not fall. He would _not_.

He would fly, if he had to make the wings himself.

He would make his mother see, he would _make_ her.

And then the idea came to him. The most beautiful idea yet.

As nurse picked up the lunch things, leaving him a big pitcher of water by the door due to the heat of the day, she asked him, several times, if he would be all right.

And he said he would. 

And he would.

He would be ready with the new mask when nurse returned in three days.

Maman would be sure to want to see him then.

* * *

He started right away, when nurse left. He had this afternoon and evening, all the next day and all the next after that before she returned and he wanted it finished, so it would be ready when she got back, ready for her to ask Maman to look at it.

He thought hard, thinking about what he wanted to do, what the final design would be, what the stitching and embroidery would be like, given the materials he would use.

He thought and sketched and worked right through until dinnertime, when the houseman tentatively knocked upon his door, telling him dinner’s here in his rough voice.

He called an answer, to leave it in the hall. Unless the houseman had a project, he had no interest in seeing him and knew the houseman felt the same, and besides, he had work to do. 

He did remember to fetch the food in, nurse was always worried about the rats they never seemed to be able to quite get rid of, and leaving food on the floor in the hall was not a good idea. The houseman had said he would pick the tray up in the morning when he came with breakfast, which was different than what nurse did, but it didn’t matter, he had no interest in eating, and one less interruption was better anyway.

He left everything on the low console just inside the door, and brought the pitcher of water nurse had left there earlier over to his table next to his wash basin. He felt the key on its chain move against his chest and remembered to go and lock the door for the night.

It felt especially important to do that tonight, on All Hallow’s Eve. He had read all about what could happen this night, the evils that could come into the world. 

He thought of porridge, and tea, and doorknobs rattling in the dark, and quickly put those thoughts away just as surely as he locked the door. 

Everything would be all right when Maman saw what he had made for her.

It was very hot. It felt strange to do so, but the door was locked…and he would be alone for hours. He took a deep breath and gingerly took his mask off, and immediately felt just a bit cooler.

He had learned there was no sense opening the window at night, even to let cooler air in, as all sorts of bugs would find their way into his room, attracted by the lamplight.

Just before he started sewing, he had a sudden terrible thought. 

He turned to check the lamp, and gusted a sigh of relief. There was enough oil to keep the lamp going until nurse returned. He would need the light for this work, to thread his needles.

He started with heavier thread, to bring the pattern pieces together.

The material was thick, harder to pierce through, but he got the rhythm of it eventually, though he had some trouble holding the slippery needle with his hands slick with sweat from the night’s heat.

It was careful exacting work, and despite the lantern, he had to do much of it by touch, as he had with the other masks, unable to see the stitchwork anyway, hidden by his own fingers.

Though he thought he had gotten used to the pricking of the needles, the heavier needle required for the initial sewing was thicker and hurt more, at times drawing tears from his eyes as he worked.

He got used to the little hurts after a while and continued his steady sewing. Anything to make Maman pleased with him, to have her want to see him.

He sewed late into the night, although he felt a strange fatigue, unusual when he was in the midst of an all consuming project, and this one was his finest idea yet.

He thought it must be the heat, and he washed his face in the basin, the water turning pink from all the wounds in his fingers, which helped for a while, although he did eventually lie on his bed for just a bit, as he felt oddly dizzy.

But he was soon back at it, lost enough in the work that morning arrived before he realized, bringing the knocking of the houseman at the door.

He told the houseman with more temper than he had yet shown to stand away, behind the door, as he threw on his old mask and assembled the dinner items. He didn’t want a scolding for not eating, so he made it look as though he’d made some inroads on the meal, unlocked the door and shoved the old tray out, pulling the door sharply to and telling the houseman to just leave the new tray outside. 

That way he didn’t have to see the fear in the man’s face, the whites of his eyes showing as he tried to avert his gaze. It was maddening, truly.

It was a relief to lock the door for good measure—not wanting to be surprised by the houseman entering his room at lunchtime—and rip the stifling mask off of his face. 

For whatever reason, fear or the drink he smelled lingering on the air from the houseman’s breath, breakfast had been hours late and lunch, as it happened, didn’t come at all. 

He wouldn’t have eaten anyway, he rarely had an appetite while working, and this heat was helping not one bit. And this way he was able to sew on his project straight through til dinner time.

He was seated, like a real tailor, cross-legged upon the floor, his tools to hand around him. He’d found himself a bit too dizzy to maintain a seat in his chair, and there was more room on the floor anyway.

A dark piece of fabric by his right knee held his packet of needles, his embroidery floss and threads, his penknife, and the small silver scissors that nurse had brought for him, when she had first brought color into his world in the form of the stack of castoff fabric scraps.

He was almost finished putting the larger sections together with dozens of careful stitches with the heavy thread. After he dealt with the houseman bringing dinner, he would start on the embroidery, initially to better disguise the seams and then to make the whole piece more beautiful with his design work.

When the hesitant knock came at the door, followed by a halting apology for missing lunch, he found his temper bristling again, calling, oh, bother, it doesn’t matter, just step back so I can open the door.

He made to rise and found himself quite unable to do so, he’d been seated cross-legged for so long, he supposed. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered but the work and getting this tedious houseman to leave him be.

He crawled over to the door, reaching to unlock it, hearing the shuffling steps as the man moved back to where they wouldn’t have to see each other. Good. All this talk of All Hallow’s Eve and ghosts and spirits troubling the earth, the real problem was this fool of a houseman constantly interrupting him.

He shoved the breakfast tray out, there having been no lunch tray, not even bothering to conceal that the food was uneaten. He didn’t care. The houseman didn’t care. It was another area where they were in perfect accord with one another.

He shut the door again, hearing the man swap the trays and proceed down the hall. He didn’t know why he bothered to drag the dinner in, he didn’t intend to eat it. Perhaps the rats deserved an All Saint’s Day feast too. The tray remained inside the door upon the floor, as he found he hadn’t the strength to lift it. He locked the door, and being unable to pull himself up to where the basin and pitcher of water stood upon the table, took the glass of water and napkin from the dinner tray and used it to wet his face and hands, leaving a pink stain behind on the yellowed linen.

He made it back to his work area, feeling woozy and with dark spots in his vision. He sat tailor fashion again, and realized with a distant shock that he had failed to cover his face when he opened the door. 

He had never done that before; he never had the mask off except when washing, he even wore it when he slept. That must be it, it was simply such a rare occurrence to have his mask off that he had not even thought about it.

He made sure the muslin mask was near him, to hand so he wouldn’t forget it again, and began his embroidery work. It was very important to not go to the door without his mask.

The fine needles for the embroidery did not hurt as much as the thicker ones he had been using for the piece work, but they were still hard to hold, slippery in his fingers. It was odd, the room was very hot, and he must be sweating for the needles to slip so, yet he felt cold. 

He was breathing rapidly, he noticed, as the motion of his chest caused movement that he had to compensate for while he worked. And there was that strange tiredness.

But he must continue. At midnight, All Saint’s would end, and All Soul’s begin and nurse would be back the day after. 

His fingers continued their steady work, covering the heavy stitching, swathing it in a smooth silky layer of threadwork. He had made faster progress than he had anticipated but he still wanted to be sure he was done when nurse came back the morning after All Soul’s Day. 

When he would ask her to have Maman see his work. 

His fingers shook as they pierced and pulled, as he thought about what would happen, as he dreamed of his mother’s face.

Maman would see, would see what he had made for love of her. Would she smile? Would she open her arms and take him into the tender embrace he longed for?

Oh…the lamp, the lamp must be going, the room was getting dark and it was hard to thread the needle yet again, he’d lost count of how many times he’d had to thread the needle as he used up each skein of floss.

But no, the lamp burned steady, yes, and he could see again, see the little doll family with their faces turned to the wall, see the jewel toned colors of their clothes. 

Rich color, like his dream room. His room that would have music, every instrument there was and he would learn to play them all and fill the air with beautiful songs, music all the time, day and night. He would have lamps burning round the clock, candles, as many candles as the room could bear, pushing away the dark. And…beautiful linens and coverlets on his bed, colorful and clean. And a robe, a heavy robe thick with patterned embroidery to keep him warm, so he wouldn’t shiver so, as he was shivering now, shivering in the odd autumn heat. And new clothes, so he would always look crisp and clean, clothes made just for him, that would fit him just right, and shined shoes that fit as well. 

And pillows, he thought, as he lay back upon the floor, just a nap, just a little nap, just close his eyes for a bit—or were they already closed, it was very dark of a sudden—pillows in every fantastic color there was, with ribbon and tassels and faceted beads that would catch the candlelight and multiply it, pillows that would make this hard floor soft beneath him. 

Oh--if he was to sleep, he needed his mask, and his tender needle-pricked fingers searching outward found the plain muslin mask where he had placed it beside him earlier, fitting it over his face, a motion he knew so well, that he had done hundreds of times, perhaps thousands, he would have to review his days again in his mind and count how many times, and he was in the dream room again, with the carillon playing, and Maman was there and he asked her, in his tailored clothes and his mask become a fitted second skin, he asked her as he had always dreamed of doing…won’t you love me now that I look beautiful, won’t you kiss me?

* * *

She returned early from church, after the morning service on All Soul’s Day.

Something didn’t feel right, and she felt wrong anyway, as she had been feeling increasingly wrong, sitting in church, sinful, knowing what was going on in that house, what she had been party to.

She got back just at lunchtime and headed up the stairs, to find the houseman ahead of her in the hallway with a tray. 

With a sudden sense of foreboding, she saw another tray, with an untouched breakfast, on the floor outside the door at the end of the hall.

“What’s this, then,” she asked sharply, coming up behind him so suddenly that he jumped, rattling the luncheon dishes on the tray in his hands. “Didn’t he eat this morning? What is the meaning of leaving the food in the hallway like this? Didn’t you take it in to him, check on him?”

“Well, no, you know I never go in there. He didn’t want me to anyway, when we spoke last night. Quite rude he was about it, too, I think you’ve spoiled him.”

“Spoiled him!” She pushed past him to the door, knocking, trying the knob.

The door was locked. He never locked the door during the day. “And what do you mean last night, did you not speak with him this morning?”

“No, madame, there was no answer. He’s a boy, they sleep like logs, I was a boy myself, you know? There was no rousing him. I thought, when he’s hungry, he’ll find the food here.”

She rattled the knob again, pulling on the door, calling him, dread pooling in her stomach when he didn’t answer. 

She spun to face the houseman, hardly daring to ask the question, yet needing an answer now. “Did she get to him, was she alone with him?”

His face blanched at the raw statement of implications they had both left unspoken for years, creating between them over time an elaborate household dance, crafting an invisible shield between mother and son.

“No, madame, she was away from the house before lunch and did not return until past dinner. He locked the door when I left him last night; it was still locked this morning.”

Still something was terribly wrong, she could feel it. “We have to get this door open.”

“He’ll wake soon enough—”

“We have to get this door open now!” She seized the lunch tray from his hands. “Fetch whatever you need to get this door open immediately!”

She prayed as the houseman moved at not near enough speed to fetch his tools. Prayed to God the boy was all right. She should never have been gone so long, never have left him alone in this house with that woman. 

The houseman returned with a hammer and screwdriver and had the door opened in minutes by tapping the hinge pins out. She moved the two food trays further down the hall and together they pulled the door open in the opposite of its usual direction, hearing the clink of nails hitting the floor as the lock installed on the inside of the door twisted and pulled free.

She gasped as she peered within and saw him, lifeless and pale, sprawled upon his back on the floor.

She squeezed through the gap and flew to him, the houseman left behind to hold the unhinged door in place.

He lay with his face turned toward the door, the smooth side of it turned up, and her breath caught as it often did when she saw how each day the resemblance to that woman, his mother, became more and more pronounced, her sharp features less beautiful on a woman than they would be heartbreakingly handsome on a man.

She knelt, and turned his poor face upward with gentle fingers upon his chin, noting with relief that he breathed, though he was supremely pale and burning hot to the touch. 

She swept to the table to fetch a cool rag dampened from the basin, but stayed her hand at the blood red water within. She found the water in the pitcher clean and dipped the rag there instead.

Kneeling beside him again, the rag dripping in her hand, she took in more of the scene, the lamp still burning to his left on the floor, the stack of fabrics across the room on the bed, only one fabric piece near him and that folded into a little mat upon which rested needles and thread, a penknife, and the child-sized scissors.

She noted upon his face his muslin half mask, perhaps a new creation, for it was patterned like none she had seen before, in thin little red lines, from forehead to chin.

She had never known him to embroider muslin before in all the masks he had ever previously made.

With growing horror, she realized the thin red lines seeping in precise little trails through the fine woven muslin were not embroidery at all.

Dropping the rag, she brought her ice cold hands to the mask and peeled it gently away.

When she woke from her dead faint, moments later, the houseman calling her name, she sent him immediately for the doctor.

The doctor did not arrive until evening.

It was just as well.

It took her hours with the tiny silver scissors to snip away all the neat lines of perfect little stitches revealed beneath the mask.

Dozens and dozens, where he had sought to pull together the gaps in his ravaged flesh.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @a-partofthenarrative for hosting the Second Annual POTO 13 Nights of Halloween event, which provided a perfect place for this story's debut posting. All the thanks to @Riffler, my forever first reader, who helped shape this story in so many ways and always goes above and beyond in encouraging me to continue. Extra special thanks to my first ever additional readers: @Flora-Gray who provided invaluable suggestions, @keepcalmandbrewtea whose wonderful comments kept me going near the end, and @whenitrainsitsnows for her always insightful comments. I cannot thank you enough and have a done a bad job of it here and will be back to fix this endnote later. For now I am going to hit submit!


End file.
